Cellular networks allow a cellular phone to connect to a nearby cellular base station through an air interface for wireless access to a telephone network. Recent developments in wireless telephone systems allow not only voice communications but also data communications. With networks growing in capacity and bandwidth, there is a strong demand by the industry in being able to deploy applications that can utilize the network growth by rolling out innovative applications. However, even though networks are gaining in capacity and capabilities, a vast majority of networks still have low bandwidth available that are not conducive to heavy OTA traffic.
A problem exists in development of mobile data services due to the significant variances between mobile devices and underlying wireless technologies. Typically, each mobile data service must be tailored to the specific to type of equipment and technology that will use the service. Consequently, an application developed for one manufacturer's equipment or network provider's technology may not work for other types of equipment and technologies. This requires a standardization, which provides a generic model where applications can be written without keeping in mind the equipment and the technology.
Another problem encountered in development of mobile data services is on the network side. Wireless networks are constrained by less bandwidth, more latency, less predictable availability than conventional wired networks. These limitations result in significant problems for accurate and timely delivery of mobile data to mobile devices by the service. Mobile users due to the nature of being ‘on the move’ need to obtain information and data in a more efficient and timely manner than desktop or laptop users using traditional web browsers. Further, as bandwidth increases, the handset's power consumption also increases which further deteriorates the already limited battery life of a mobile device. Therefore, even as wireless networks improve their ability to deliver higher bandwidth, the power availability of the mobile device will still limit the effective throughput of data to and from the mobile device. Also, screen size, memory and plug-in functionality on the handheld device may be significantly lower than what is available through a browser on a laptop, so that a Web page easily viewed on a laptop is essentially unintelligible on the mobile device. A network-based service cannot rely on a particular mobile device having a screen of needed size or having the power to execute a full browser application.
Complex interactions, such as those involving shopping online or employing an expert system to diagnose symptoms of a problem, require many messages to be sent back and forth between a client process and one or more server processes. Because there is vide variety of mobile devices, with a wide range of screen sizes, colors, memory sizes, processor types and client protocols, it is generally cost prohibitive to try to duplicate all the functionality of a network-based service for each possible mobile device.
Various systems exist that describe the systems and methods to generate and provide interactive applications to the wireless devices which are herein mentioned below.
US 2008/0119228 describes about a system for mobile devices that facilitates the creation and dissemination of interactive media to a plurality of mobile devices. A computer or PC comprising an interactive media generator is used to generate interactive media and communicate it to a distribution server. Mobile devices have an interactive media client component to receive and present interactive media to a user.
US 2008/0119132 relates to a media distribution server presenting interactive media on mobile devices and receives mobile user response interactively. During the presentation of interactive media the user is prompted with multiple choices for their selection, which can be provided using softkeys on the mobile device. The media distribution server prepares the subsequent portions of the interactive media and delivers them to the mobile device. In one embodiment, the necessary text, graphics, audio and video are assembled and integrated dynamically and is presented on the mobile device to the user. Further the mobile user is prompted to approve online purchases, make online appointment requests, show interest in products, etc. while browsing the interactive media on their mobile device. The media distribution server supports such activities as necessary.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,752 provides an interactive applications generator is utilized to generate an interactive application environment for use on a single server multi-client network computer system. The interactive applications generator permits a user to define a graphical user interface (GUI), that contains one or more display screens, for a customized interactive application environment. The interactive applications generator contains a screen template editor, a media frame editor, a screen editor, and an interactive presentation editor. The screen template editor is utilized to create generic screen templates, that contain generic screen template elements. The media frame editor is utilized to generate media frames by combining multimedia component elements in a time synchronized manner. The screen editor is utilized to generate the display screens including assigning functionality. In order to create a unique instance for each display screen for a particular interactive applications environment, the screen editor references generic screen templates and media frames. The interactive presentation editor is utilized to create the hierarchical structures that defines presentation of the display screens for the particular interactive presentation environment.
US 2002/0052781 relates to a systems, methods, computer program products, and combinations and sub-combinations thereof for enabling interactive advertisements (as well as other objects) to be loaded on mobile devices (as well as other types of devices), and for users of mobile devices to operate with such interactive advertisements on their mobile devices in an interactive manner while in an off-line mode.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,874,029 is directed to a method and system for controlling the state of an interactive application and controlling delivery of the interactive application to one or more users. The system of the present invention is a system for delivering an interactive application to one or more users of a communications network and may comprise an interactive application adapted to the communications network; a user access device adapted to receive said interactive application; control means for establishing parameters under which said interactive application is rendered on said user access device; and mediation means for establishing terms for the interaction between the at least one user and other users and the communications network.
US 2002/0083461 provides a system for providing one or more interactive applications to one or more users via a wireless communications network, the system including: one or more servers cooperating with the network to substantially deliver one or more interactive applications to one or more wireless access devices each corresponding to at least one of the users; wherein, after the one or more wireless access devices receive the substantially delivered one or more applications, upon request of one of the users the one or more corresponding wireless access devices receives communication from the server to facilitate the one of the users accessing the one or more interactive applications using the corresponding wireless access device.
The main disadvantage with these and other similar methods in the field is that some of these methods describe about particular implementation of interactive applications for example gaming applications and moreover they do not explain about short messaging protocol through which interactive applications can be transmitted to the wireless device which is a low bandwidth based distribution technique and which is required for fast and efficient wireless communication. The cited documents transmits the interactive applications containing high media content through the network which are not conducive to heavy over the air traffic and requires lot of bandwidth.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for techniques that allow network-based services to be made readily available to a wide range of mobile devices or to support complex transactions, or both, without having to explicitly program each network-based service to support all forms of mobile devices. Further, there is also a need for designing a low footprint application so as to not to limit and deteriorate the mobile battery power and make efficient usage of phone memory and CPU. As already explained above, due to increase in bandwidth the battery life decreases so it is crucial to design a low bandwidth network application so as to maximize the network reach and to boost the life of the low processing power mobile phones.